What a pleasant surprise...
Added 10/3/2009
To find this film after all these years. I saw it in the theater when it was released. Back then I was in my early 20s. They couldn't make enough suspense/horror films for me, lol. Am thinking I saw every one that was released during the early- to late-'80s when the genre was still popular.
Over time I had forgotten the title of this one but not the details. A friend on a forum site found the title recently.
As has been mentioned in previous reviews, the last half hour or so of this film is what makes it so memorable. Worm-riddled corpses dressed in rotted period clothing or what's left of it, seemingly resurrected from the grave and moving toward the viewer. These final scene effects were quite detailed and realistic for the time.
Adam West plays a rather boorish role as RayMar's son-in-law. Not West's finest hour but it's nice to see him looking so young.
Unlike many suspense flicks of the era, One Dark Night doesn't spring those heart-stopping surprises that caused one to jump back in his seat (and in doing so, dump twenty dollars worth of popcorn and Coke Cola on the theater floor and your girlfriend's good outfit). Rather, the story line builds slowly, allowing the viewer to focus on what's happening.
This film is more in the suspense genre than the horror genre. Horror film icons like Freddy Krueger and Chuckie were great at what they did. Unlike a good suspense flick the horror genre focuses more on blood and gore than telling a story.
Agreed, One Dark Night carries the infamous "teen fright" baggage. But so do some of Stephen King's stories. Like any fine suspense tale, it builds to a climax and gets good at the end.
Some younger viewers who are accustomed to today's elaborate, computer-generated effects and 3-D animation may not be overly impressed by this film. It does contain some props that reflect the times. Props such as rotary dial telephones, pinball machines and the 75¢ photo booth. Our hero rides a motorcycle with no brain bucket. The teens aren't texting not chatting on cell phones. But as the old saying goes, you had to be there. :)
4 stars for the less-than-stellar transition from the original. Aside from than that, I love it. It's great to see it again. Kudos to the folks at Amazon for quick shipping.
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Great movie with a poor quality DVD transfer
Added 9/26/2009
Although this is a pretty lavish two disc edition, the theatrical print used for the transfer has some bad scratches, dirt, splices and audio pops and hisses. Sad Anchor Bay didn't grab this one up, they would have done a decent restoration and given the film soundtrack a remix. The colors are sharp and the grain isn't too bad but the constant scratches and glitches in the picture are distracting. It was nice to watch the work print version that is included on the second disc but I can't imagine I would ever sit through it more than once as the picture quality of this version looks to be second generation VHS in a pan and scan format. The behind the scenes footage is extensive and fairly entertaining and the audio commentary for the film is very interesting. I could give this release a rave review if the quality of the print had been at an acceptable standard. This is one of the best horror films from the 80's and I hope at some point it gets the restoration that it deserves instead of this very uneven attempt.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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The transfer could be better, but the horror couldn't
Added 4/19/2009
Since Jason and his ilk took over horror films circa 1980 most every horror film has involved a group of hormonally charged teenagers being chopped to bits with the focus on the chopping and not the suspense.
This little film is different. Made in the early 80's it does what every good horror film should do - bring your worst fears to life while you sit around just knowing that these horrors are just around the corner. Then, you make those horrors simmer, just don't turn it into a lesson on the biology of butchering.
The story features Meg Tilly right before she had a short-lived turn with fame starting with "The Big Chill" and then slipped back into obscurity in the early 90's. Meg plays an outcast teenager who is just dying to get into the good graces of some classic mean girls. They tell her she can be part of their little group if she spends the night in a crypt. The mean girls intend to scare her and cause her to leave the crypt thus giving them a double reward - further tormenting the outcast girl and having an excuse to reject her.
Meanwhile famed occultist Karl Rhamarevich has died shortly after having discovered a way to become even more powerful in death through telekinesis. His daughter doesn't believe this at first, but she listens to a tape about her father's experiments which included his successful animation of small dead animals and of his plans to emerge from the grave with the power to animate bigger game and draw power from these animations. She also learns that she may have inherited her father's power and may be the only person who can stop him should he actually rise from the dead. I think you know where this story is headed, so I'll stop here.
I will mention that the DVD does look somewhat degraded compared to what you would expect from a film that was made so recently. I saw it on TV in the mid 1980's and I remember it looking better than this. The problem is that the original negative of the film was never located so the DVD had to be created from a print. This means it comes complete with dirt and scratches.
This is worth checking out for any horror fan. It was an independently made film and an example of the kind of unusual stuff that you could commonly find on latenight TV until the infomercial turned that time slot into a vast wasteland circa 1986. Only TCM Underground airs this kind of film anymore.
2 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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Underground hit films
Added 3/25/2009
One Dark Night this film wasn't a Hugh box office hit, but I'm not surprised that there still are a lot of people who enjoy this film, and I am one of those people, I watched this film years ago as a teen, I watched it with my big sister, and we both loved it, its got all the bells and whistles for a true horror movie fans, and yea I know it dose have a small about of cheesiness. but over all this film is fun and creepy all at the same time, and it has a lot of underground fans, and I think they should create an award show for films like this, films that are over looked and underappreciated at the box office but have an underground fallowing of fans, it should be called the underground hit awards lol. because this film rocks and it should have recived a better reception in the movie theater.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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Pretty good
Added 2/11/2009
One Dark Night is a brave attempt to do something different in the horror genre, and in places the film really outshines many of its rivals. However the overall story is weak, not to mention extremely far-fetched.
To get the plot out of the way, a group of mean girls offer a shy girl called Julie (Meg Tilly) the chance to join their gang if she will dare to spend one night locked up in a mausoleum. Julie accepts, however what none of them know is that a famous psychic with eerie powers has just been entombed within the very same mausoleum , and his corpse is not about to rest in peace! Well that sets up a pretty good (but standard) scenario for some supernatural scares, but the film takes almost all of its running time to reach this point. Most of the build up is centered around the girls rivalry and scheming, and this takes far too long. At least other films like "Hell Night" (which you could say this movie has a very vague resemblance to) actually start with the lock-in and build straight from there, but here, its 40 minutes in before the doors actually close on our heroine, and well over over the one hour mark before the spooky activity really started.
So sadly, nearly all the mayhem is confined to the last 15 minutes of the movie, so you'll have to be patient. But once it does start (and while it lasts), the film really rocks. The mausoleum becomes a pretty frightening vision of hell as the supernatural powers of the psychic start to terrorize poor Julie. Special effects are top notch, and you'll be seeing quite a few very realistic looking corpses that probably scared the actresses so much they didn't really need to act.
On that note, the acting's ok, and Meg Tilly makes an appealing lead, however, the script seems to have been designed to make you completely lose sympathy in the main character of Julie, as she goes from spunky heroine to spaced out, quivering wreck by the end of the film, with barely any dialogue. This annoyed me somewhat. After the eye-popping assault that I mentioned above, I would have preferred Julie to have been given rather more notable treatment in the climax, but everything ends very swiftly and without any real closure.
However these things aside, I enjoyed the film and think it was a pretty good idea. The mausoleum interior looks great, the lighting is cool and the corpses are fantastic. So all in all, a good enough film, which with a bit more attention, could have been a great film.
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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What a pleasant surprise...
Added 10/3/2009
To find this film after all these years. I saw it in the theater when it was released. Back then I was in my early 20s. They couldn't make enough suspense/horror films for me, lol. Am thinking I saw every one that was released during the early- to late-'80s when the genre was still popular.
Over time I had forgotten the title of this one but not the details. A friend on a forum site found the title recently.
As has been mentioned in previous reviews, the last half hour or so of this film is what makes it so memorable. Worm-riddled corpses dressed in rotted period clothing or what's left of it, seemingly resurrected from the grave and moving toward the viewer. These final scene effects were quite detailed and realistic for the time.
Adam West plays a rather boorish role as RayMar's son-in-law. Not West's finest hour but it's nice to see him looking so young.
Unlike many suspense flicks of the era, One Dark Night doesn't spring those heart-stopping surprises that caused one to jump back in his seat (and in doing so, dump twenty dollars worth of popcorn and Coke Cola on the theater floor and your girlfriend's good outfit). Rather, the story line builds slowly, allowing the viewer to focus on what's happening.
This film is more in the suspense genre than the horror genre. Horror film icons like Freddy Krueger and Chuckie were great at what they did. Unlike a good suspense flick the horror genre focuses more on blood and gore than telling a story.
Agreed, One Dark Night carries the infamous "teen fright" baggage. But so do some of Stephen King's stories. Like any fine suspense tale, it builds to a climax and gets good at the end.
Some younger viewers who are accustomed to today's elaborate, computer-generated effects and 3-D animation may not be overly impressed by this film. It does contain some props that reflect the times. Props such as rotary dial telephones, pinball machines and the 75¢ photo booth. Our hero rides a motorcycle with no brain bucket. The teens aren't texting not chatting on cell phones. But as the old saying goes, you had to be there. :)
4 stars for the less-than-stellar transition from the original. Aside from than that, I love it. It's great to see it again. Kudos to the folks at Amazon for quick shipping.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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Great movie with a poor quality DVD transfer
Added 9/26/2009
Although this is a pretty lavish two disc edition, the theatrical print used for the transfer has some bad scratches, dirt, splices and audio pops and hisses. Sad Anchor Bay didn't grab this one up, they would have done a decent restoration and given the film soundtrack a remix. The colors are sharp and the grain isn't too bad but the constant scratches and glitches in the picture are distracting. It was nice to watch the work print version that is included on the second disc but I can't imagine I would ever sit through it more than once as the picture quality of this version looks to be second generation VHS in a pan and scan format. The behind the scenes footage is extensive and fairly entertaining and the audio commentary for the film is very interesting. I could give this release a rave review if the quality of the print had been at an acceptable standard. This is one of the best horror films from the 80's and I hope at some point it gets the restoration that it deserves instead of this very uneven attempt.
0 out of 0 people found this helpful.
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The transfer could be better, but the horror couldn't
Added 4/19/2009
Since Jason and his ilk took over horror films circa 1980 most every horror film has involved a group of hormonally charged teenagers being chopped to bits with the focus on the chopping and not the suspense.
This little film is different. Made in the early 80's it does what every good horror film should do - bring your worst fears to life while you sit around just knowing that these horrors are just around the corner. Then, you make those horrors simmer, just don't turn it into a lesson on the biology of butchering.
The story features Meg Tilly right before she had a short-lived turn with fame starting with "The Big Chill" and then slipped back into obscurity in the early 90's. Meg plays an outcast teenager who is just dying to get into the good graces of some classic mean girls. They tell her she can be part of their little group if she spends the night in a crypt. The mean girls intend to scare her and cause her to leave the crypt thus giving them a double reward - further tormenting the outcast girl and having an excuse to reject her.
Meanwhile famed occultist Karl Rhamarevich has died shortly after having discovered a way to become even more powerful in death through telekinesis. His daughter doesn't believe this at first, but she listens to a tape about her father's experiments which included his successful animation of small dead animals and of his plans to emerge from the grave with the power to animate bigger game and draw power from these animations. She also learns that she may have inherited her father's power and may be the only person who can stop him should he actually rise from the dead. I think you know where this story is headed, so I'll stop here.
I will mention that the DVD does look somewhat degraded compared to what you would expect from a film that was made so recently. I saw it on TV in the mid 1980's and I remember it looking better than this. The problem is that the original negative of the film was never located so the DVD had to be created from a print. This means it comes complete with dirt and scratches.
This is worth checking out for any horror fan. It was an independently made film and an example of the kind of unusual stuff that you could commonly find on latenight TV until the infomercial turned that time slot into a vast wasteland circa 1986. Only TCM Underground airs this kind of film anymore.
2 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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